Kaulig Racing fires spotter for Ty Dillon after playoff-altering accident involving William Byron

NASCAR spotter Joe White said Wednesday he was fired following a major accident involving Ty Dillon, the driver he scouted for, and Cup Series playoff contender William Byron late in Sunday’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. White worked for Kaulig Racing as an observer for their No. 10 Cup Series team as well as their No. 11 Xfinity Series team.

With 31 laps remaining in Sunday’s opening round of 16 race in Las Vegas, Dillon – who had been lapping a car he had been struggling with – was called to the pits for a green flag stop just after the leaders completed their pit cycle. Normally, a team coming onto pit road is expected to alert traffic behind them that they are slowing down to get onto pit road, whether by the spotter alerting the spotter of the car racing behind them or by the driver issuing a hand signal to the traffic behind them. This is especially true in cases where a late car arrives on pit road ahead of the cars leading the lap.

Dillon was called to pit road just after being delayed a lap by race leader Kyle Larson, and he began to slow down in turns 3 and 4 in order to make the pit road entry a short distance ahead of William Byron, who had just lost the lead and remained in second. But apparently Byron’s team hadn’t received a message from Dillon’s team that they were going to the pits: Byron had only been informed that he expected Dillon to run in the second or third lane, leaving him completely unaware that the No. 10 in front of him was coming onto pit road.

The result was a violent collision that eliminated Dillon and Byron from the race, and which seriously hampered Byron’s championship hopes. Before the accident, Byron had a 23-point advantage on the cut line to advance to Championship 4, and still had a chance to earn a place in the final round by winning. Instead, and despite leading 55 laps, Byron left Las Vegas with a 36th-place finish that left him 15 points below the cut line. Byron will now either have to overcome its points deficit or win at Talladega or Martinsville to advance to the final round of the playoffs and have a chance to win the Cup Series championship in the season finale at Phoenix.

“I never saw him salute. I didn’t see any indication that he was pitting, and it was probably 12 to 15 laps after we pitted, so I figured the cycle [of green flag stops] “It was completely over,” Byron told USA as he left the field care center. “No one said anything to my spotter as far as I know. I had no idea. … I was watching him thinking ‘okay, he kind of missed the bottom here,’ and then he just started slowing down, and I had no idea what was going on.

“I’m just devastated. I had no clue, so obviously I wouldn’t have run full speed into his back like that.”

On Wednesday afternoon, White said he was dismissed upon arriving at Talladega for this weekend’s race and was heading to the airport to return home. Although White was not expected to return as Dillon’s spotter in 2026, he was expected to stay with Kaulig before his midweek firing.

With White no longer on the team, Frank Deiny Jr., who had been the observer for Kaulig and AJ Allmendinger’s No. 16 team, will join the No. 10 team to be Dillon’s observer for the final three races of the season. Former NASCAR driver TJ Bell will take over as spotter for Allmendinger and the No. 16 team.